In 1975 however a game called 'Gun Fight' was released Taito (designed by Tomohiro Nishikado). In this game you actually controlled a character (a cowboy) and the aim was to shoot thither player, for each succesful hit you scored a point. Since this is very early in gaming, many games of the 70's didn't have in depth characters like you do in modern day games where many characters seem to have their own story to play as well as their own back story alongside that.
1980 - 1989: A personal favourite of mine is a game called 'Dig Dug' which was released in 1982 by Namco where you must dig to find monsters underground and you get points awarded for killing these monsters, you can either inflate them to death or drop rocks on them to score points. When this game was released the character you play as is literally called Dig Dug, but in future appearances of Namco games where Dig Dug was a guest character he was given the name Mr Driller. As you can see from previous games, the game Dig Dugs character actually had a name which is showing that characters are being thought about more and more through the decades, even something as simple as giving them a name (which the 1975 game Gun Fight, as an example, didn't do) is still a small advancement in video games.
1990 - 1999: Another favourite of mine is the Pokemon series, Pokemon Red and Pokemon Blue (ironically a black and white game) to be exact, which came out in 1998 and was released for the Game Boy by Nintendo. This game was a much more open experience when compared to games like Dig Dug and the very popular well known Pacman since you could walk around an entire made up world, Dig Dug and Pacman were stuck to one area which changed slightly after each level. In this first series of the Pokemon franchise you were able to name your character whatever you liked (with a 7 letter limit I believe) which to me makes it a more immersive experience since you can name the character after yourself if you want to and feel that you are in the actual game exploring this world. As well as my last point, every NPC you come across in this game has a name which also makes it more realistic. This is showing that as technology improved so have the games, and since games can go more in depth, they can also do much more with the characters in those games.
2000 - 2009: Another one of my favourite games, World of Warcraft which was released in 2004 by Blizzard Entertainment. As far as characters go this game gives you so much to choose from when creating your unique characters, you have limited options in the character creation menu but you can also choose your race and class which also effect your appearance. There are also endless amounts of armour and weapons you can earn and buy for your character as you progress through the game making so many characters look unique. Though your character may not have a backstory or an in depth storyline like a lot of games from this decade (Final Fantasy XII as an example) you yourself create a story from the quests you complete and how you interact with other players giving an open world experience. In this time period, I would say characters in games have advanced the most in storyline and visual appearance since there are such a range of games out there which do this, not just the odd few.
2010 - 2016: The Last of Us, released by Naughty Dog in 2013, is by far one of the best games for character development and emotional attachment to those characters, possibly one of the only games where to me the characters actual feel real because of how they behave and how they act. *Spoilers coming up* the two main characters Ellie and Joel have to travel across america in a post apocalyptic earth where people are infected with a virus which turns people into a unique breed of zombies never before seen in other zombie like games. The back story of both of these characters makes sense, the stories feel real, and the story throughout the game also feels real for both of them, what I mean by this is that Ellie and Joel both have reactions that a grown man and young teenage girl would have in this situation. You experience everything they experience form start to finish and share the bond they have as they travel across an apocalyptic america, you experience the struggles they have and get emotionally attached to these characters. I also like how the side story 'The Last of Us - Left Behind' has a more modern approach to games, what I mean by this is a romance between the main character Ellie and her friend Riley, both girls, if there were a lesbian relationship in games in previous decades I don't believe the response would have been positive. I was drifting off topic a bit but my last point shows how games and their characters are embracing the modern world and how in-depth these storylines are getting and how attached you can get to a character who essentially only exist in that game. I can't wait to see how characters develop in the future, because in my opinion the narrative of games is getting better and theres even more thought put into characters than previous decades, both due to the lack of technology in those times and how gaming isn't as popular in the past as it was today but there has definitely been improvement.
Bibliography
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_Fight
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_video_games
- http://videogamehistory.wikia.com/wiki/Dig_Dug
- http://www.therichest.com/rich-list/most-influential/the-15-greatest-video-games-of-the-90s/4/
- http://www.pastemagazine.com/blogs/lists/2009/11/the-20-best-video-games-of-the-decade.html
- http://uk.ign.com/games/the-last-of-us/ps3-123980
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